Etiquette

As with all of i3, leave nothing on the workbenches. Your project can be stored in a labeled box in the electronics room if you are actively working on it and it is small. Otherwise, take it home or use regular member storage.

If you were trimming or stripping wires, consider sweeping before you leave.

Store

The gray and gray/yellow drawers on the back wall are the electronics "store". These components are for anyone who has a use for them. Place payment in the drawer labeled "Gives us the money Lebowski" near the middle. The image on the right is an approximate map to the component locations as of late August 2012. Ping Nate B for an update if one appears to be needed.

Some drawers are now labeled with prices, usually a cost "C" which is what it costs us to restock, and a second value for comparison, like "RS" for Radio Shack's price on an equivalent item. These are just FYI, and all we ask is that you cover the cost. Any markup beyond that is up to you, but you can be pretty generous and still save a bundle compared to retail. A buck here and there helps the selection continue to grow!

If there's no cost label and you don't know what a component goes for, find it on http://mouser.com/ and add 10% to cover shipping. If you need change, break your bills with change from the cup in the fridge. However, these funds go to different places, so don't just drop money in the wrong cup.

If you wish to donate components to the store, feel free to do so. If it is clear where they belong, just drop them in, adding labels as necessary. Avoid leaving anything in an unlabeled drawer or bin. If you don't know where something belongs, ask Nate B, or leave a note indicating your intent and he will find or make a place so the parts can remain organized.

Reference prices for bulk items:
Rather than tagging each value individually...

Add a temperature-controlled exhaust fan, and corresponding intake grille, to the load-bank box.

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20A plug on CZ strip

Replace the temporary 15A plug on the compute zone power strip

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Lego

wire spool rack

Design a (laser-cuttable?) rack for small wire spools, that hangs on pegboard or under shelf

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equipment pages for the keysight gear

wiki zone task? find the right template and make stub pages for the MSOX4154A, the E3631A, the 33600A, and 34461A.

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tenma meter repair

Fix the sticky ammeter needle on the Tenma 72-630 PSU. Gently!

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Floor decluttering

Cull the storage under the benches. Everything left should be in a proper tote with proper label.

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Thank you Brandon!

Meters

(Just a copy of a post on the mailing list, feel free to pretty this section up and remove this note.)

Referring to the numbered photo:

1: "Fish" scale, 50lb or thereabouts, hook style. Often the easiest way to measure a weight or force, this thing's built tough and has been with us since the Royal Oak days. Owner: Nate B.

2: Kill-a-watt or similar plug-in AC wattmeter. We have several of these. Useful not just for load measurement ("Can this run from that extension cord?"), but also power factor, voltage sag under load, etc. Owner: Various.

3: Logic Dart. This is like a pocket oscilloscope except it doesn't do analog -- it's a multichannel logic analyzer and even disassembles a few protocols. Incredibly useful for things like async serial troubleshooting, but the probes and wires are delicate. Owner: Ted Hansen.

4 and 5: Noncontact AC "volt-sniffers". Beeps in presence of AC field, use as a first quick-check to find live wires. Never trust your life to this; always verify with an actual meter before beginning work! Owner: Various/unknown.

7: Three-light AC outlet tester. You know this one. Trivia: Solid-state relays (and triac-based dimmers) in their "off" state can allow enough leakage to light the neon lamps in this tester. Confusion ensues! Owner: Nate B, perhaps others, I think there are a few of these around.

8: LCR meter. That's L for inductance, C for capacitance, R for resistance. This is the cheapest of the cheap, and doesn't work on very high or very low values. Also operation if you select the wrong component type is unpredictable. Also sometimes it's just plain unstable. But it works, mostly. (A better LCR meter is on the wishlist.) Use for sorting or checking capacitors prior to use. Owner: i3.

9: Laser distance meter. Seriously consider reading the manual, this has way too many features. By default it seems to figure its own body into the length measurement, but I'm sure that's configurable if you don't want that. Surprisingly accurate. Owner: Nate B.

12: Light intensity meter. Measures in lux, can manually convert to footcandles or whatever. Supposedly weighted to human sensitivity curve but I find this claim dubious given its price. Uncalibrated, obviously. Too sensitive to measure direct sunlight; use neutral-density filters to stop it down and then adjust your math later by comparing to a known light source. Owner: Nate B.

13: Inline DC wattmeter/ammeter/hourmeter: Replacement for the similar-but-larger Watts-Up meter (which met an untimely end when its max-voltage spec was exceeded), this one has more features but seems less accurate. Anyone with ideas for calibration, have at and let me know what you find! Super handy for measuring battery charge and capacity, device load, etc. Sadly only measures in one direction so not useful as a battery coulomb-counter. Owner: Nate B.

Second photo: Three-mode tachometer. With the nose detatched, this is a photo-tach that measures reflective dots on a belt or rotating object. Snap on the nose, and it measures RPM as the spinny bit is pressed against a shaft end, with 3 different conical attachments for contact. Swap out the cone for the wheel, and it measures surface speed of a belt or whatever. Please keep all the accessories with it in the box! Oh, and RTFM before using the wheel, there's a scale factor... Owner: Nate B.

Not pictured but lives behind the other-meters bin: West Mountain Computerized Battery Analyzer III (CBA3). A computer-controlled resistive load with a calibrated ammeter, you charge the battery with your usual charger, then use this to discharge it and see how much power you got out. Software is on the CD in the box. Owner: Nate B.

Also recently joined: Simpson micro-ohmmeter, not yet set up and working; we need to make some BNC-to-Kelvin clip leads for it. And then sanity-check it with a few known low resistances. But then it's an amazing tool for measuring wires and other resistances below the range of typical multimeters. Owner: Evan?

Reference

Some resources I've found useful for learning soldering, for those like me that prefer a good video over reading a website: